Friday, July 4, 2014

Ultimate Sriracha Chicken Slider- White Castle: Tomsriver, NJ

Ultimate Sriracha Chicken Slider- White Castle: Tomsriver, NJ

I hope all of the American's out there(myself included) have a lovely holiday weekend!

I love White Castle, but to be honest I really don't have any reason why I love it as much as I do. The food is far from healthy, the quality of the ingredients is pretty typical for fast food, and the nearest location for me is over an hour away, but there's just something about this little burger chain that makes me inexplicably happy.

After breaking my 14 year streak of not eating Taco Bell, which my boyfriend loves, I figured it was only fair for him to do the same and break his over a decade streak of not eating White Castle. (Well non-frozen White Castle anyway.) Plus, there are new little sriracha chicken sliders available right now! I had to give those a try before they disappeared, so off to White Castle we went.

That's right, that cardboard suitcase of 30 cheeseburgers is just for me. I always get a crave case when I drive up there, and there have been times where my buddy Jared and I have debated on getting a Crave Crate (100 burgers) to split, but so far we haven't reached the point of needing to stock our freezers with 50 tiny burgers. (Not yet anyway.)

Like I said, the nearest location for me is over an hour drive away, almost 2 and a half hours round trip, so when I go to White Castle I go big and go home.

The meal came with an order of fries, which are typical crinkle-cut french fries you can get at any diner or fast food joint, a small soda (which was a lot large than my boyfriend and I remembered or expected), and two little sliders.

Inside the little bun, which is a miniaturized version of typical fast food burger buns, there is a chicken patty that's been covered in sriracha infused breading topped with crispy jalapeno bits and a chipoltle mayonnaise. While these sliders are little, each one is still about 5-6 bites, which seems a bit more substantial than the typical ultra thin patties that come on normal White Castle Burgers.

I tried one of the little jalapeno bits on it's own, and I found the texturing to be a lot like Pickle Crunch. The outside is crispy, and you can taste the jalapeno peppers, but it has a slight pickled/vinegar-ed taste. Now I'm admittedly weird. I have been known to drink balsamic vinegar as a treat, so I love all thing vinegar-y and this was right up my alley.

I took a bite of the slider and the chicken was surprisingly moist and flavorful. The meat quality was a lot better than I was expecting. As for the breading, sadly I couldn't taste much of the sriracha. There is a subtle hint of spiciness from the breading, but it was the same as most spicy chicken sandwiches on the market. There didn't seem to be anything specifically "sriracha" about it, but the mild spiciness did add something to the chicken. When combined with the creamy chipotle mayo and crispy jalapeno bits the overall spiciness of this sandwich ends up being in the medium range of things, but the flavorings all worked rather nicely together. I happily ate up my two little sliders and even as I'm writing this review I am craving more. (So that's a good sign.)

I would love to buy these again, but with the location being so far from my home I don't know if I'll be able to make another trip out there before this new slider is gone. I'm trying to think up a way to add sriracha to my breading and recreate this at home, since I think Pickle Crunch makes a jalapeno version which would make recreating this sandwich pretty easy, but I'll have to play around with breading mixtures to see how things will work.

I hope all of you Americans have a lovely holiday, and the rest of you have a lovely weekend!